


Anything You Could Possibly Need

by quantumoddity



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, First Kiss, First Meeting, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 04:17:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18066437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumoddity/pseuds/quantumoddity
Summary: Shaun Gilmore has always prided himself on the ability to fix any problem, meet any need.But of course, of all the people to ruin that perfect reputation, it had to be Vax'ildan.





	Anything You Could Possibly Need

Shaun Gilmore had always prided himself on selling any item a person could ever want in his store clinging to the University Quarter. A little pinch of something to see you through a night of last minute cramming? He had that and sold it by the jarful come finals week. A scarf that, when wrapped around a person’s neck would instantly smell of whatever most reminded them of home to chase away the lingering homesickness that could chase a student even late into the year, although they wouldn’t like to admit it? He had that and would give them a comforting nod as he wrapped it for them. Powered mac and cheese that actually tasted good? He even had that.

He’d built his shop to cater to as many needs as he possibly could, he’d filled it with counters and wardrobes and shelves that groaned with items bottled, powdered and bagged in every colour a person could think of, each individual item seeming disparate but, when you looked at it all from his counter, it knitted into something perfect, something right and assured.

The way he saw it, this benefited everyone involved in the transaction; it meant more gold in his hands and more satisfied customers. Though there were times, he had to admit, where the weight of the coins as he passed them idly from hand to hand, making them disappear and reappear, would feel a little less important than the satisfaction of knowing there was a gap in the world that he’d filled.

Whatever the exhausted, frazzled students came through his doors needing, Gilmore would find it for them without fail and see them leave with more of a smile than they came in with.

That was, until, he met Vax’ildan.

Just like all the others before him, he’d came into Gilmore’s needing something desperately, all red rimmed eyes, nervous hands and gnawed lips. He’d not known what it was but that wasn’t unusual. Most people who needed something didn’t know what that something was, more often than not they didn’t even know they needed in the first place. That part of the arrangement was Gilmore’s job.

But he’d studied Vax with his knowing eyes. He’d listened to him talk, something nearing his whole life story not at all hard to tease out of him, he’d given it all with the carelessness of someone who was so uncertain of their own future they just cast out their lines wherever they could and hoped everyone they met would turn out to be their new best friend, an important figure in whatever was coming. He’d watched him pace back and forth across the shop, gesticulating wildly as he spoke. He’d took in all of his tall, thin frame, his long black hair and prominent, pointed ears that spoke of some elven heritage that was none too far away. Gilmore watched and waited for whatever this young man needed to become clear so he could progress with business as usual.

But he’d received no answer.

So he’d asked Vax (as he’d told him he could address him with a weary sigh that made it clear he’d long given up on his own name as unpronounceable for most people) to come back the next day. And he did.

Now it was nearly three months since that first time the store bell- an unnecessary antiquity some might say but the pure theatricality of it made Gilmore smile whenever he heard it- had rang out the entrance of Vax. Ever since then, it must have done it hundreds of times as the young student came in most every day, to catch up with Gilmore, complain about how he couldn’t decide on a major and how his sister was spending all her time with her boyfriend and not him, to brighten Gilmore’s day in any number of ways.

And he still had that hungry look in his eyes, the stiffness in his shoulders that screamed out an unfilled, unnamed desire to those who knew how to look. Gilmore was trying not to let it bother him, trying to tell himself that things couldn’t be rushed. But honestly? He’d lost a few nights of sleep to it. This was his reputation after all, the thing that had allowed him to open a successful store in only a year after having to abandon his studies at the University due to not having the funds to pay his tuition, the thing he prized above all else, one of the last few things he could have faith in.

And it didn’t help that, the more time he spent around Vax, the more his thoughts on how to help him became clouded with other thoughts. Ones that admired how his eyes looked so dark and somehow so alive. Ones that delighted in the immense raven wing tattoos that covered his back, the ones he’d shown him gladly one day, hiking up his shirt in full view of all the other customers and now Gilmore couldn’t help but stare at when he saw it peek over his shirts. Ones that became inextricably focused on Vax’s lips as he spoke, loving how he would colour them sometimes but, even when he didn’t, they still looked so soft.

Thoughts that were, in short, entirely unhelpful.

So the days went by, Vax coming in more frequently, Gilmore stopping in whatever he was doing to rush and greet him, even hanging around at the counter when he really should have been in the back room doing the paperwork, eyes drifting out the window and wanting to see the flash of black that meant Vax was crossing the road and was seconds away from waving at him happily.

And still he couldn’t find that _something._

Until the evening he did. And once he did, Gilmore felt like the biggest idiot in the whole damn city.

 

“The way they look at each other, it’s disgusting,” Vax groaned, lying flat on his back on the counter, staring up at the ceiling, “I feel like asking them to leave the room just from the way they moon over each other.”

Gilmore chuckled, pausing slightly in his note taking of what stock needed reordering to consider shoving Vax off the counter. But it was late, late enough that nothing beyond the gaze of the streetlamps was visible outside the window and though the sign wasn’t flipped yet, they were the only ones in the store. So he allowed it.

“It’s young love, Vax,” he pointed out, finding a gap in his friend’s complaining, “It’s sweet in its own, kind of gross way. No cure I’m afraid.”

Vax wrinkled his nose in disgust, “She’s my _sister._ I don’t want it shoved in my face at all hours of the day that her and Perce are boinking. Hearing it through the wall at night is bad enough.”

Gilmore had to groan slightly in sympathy at that. He’d met Vex’halia and Percy on a few occasions, usually at the bar when he and Vax had the rare and exciting chance to meet outside the store. The dark haired girl, who looked startlingly like Vax, and the white haired, nervous looking young man had the kind of obvious, demonstrative love that it really was quite beautiful to be in the presence of. But being her brother would put an understandable unpleasant edge to things.

“I do have sleeping draughts you know,” Gilmore reminded his friend, moving past him so he could pin the list he’d made to his corkboard, “Guaranteed to give you a blissful night of sleep, deaf to your sister’s active sex life.”

“Knowing about it isn’t even the worst part,” Vax huffs, sitting up with his feet on the chair behind the counter, “I’m _jealous_. How bad is that? I haven’t got any in so long, my sister’s getting more action than me.” He shuddered in horror.

That made Gilmore pause a little, though he tried to cover it up, “Dry spell, huh? I find that hard to believe for someone like you.”

He earned a grateful smile for that comment, “See, you always say the right things…but yeah, it’s been a while. More of a while than I’d like, If we’re laying it all out on the table.”

Gilmore suddenly remembered he had something very important to do at the register, right up close to Vax, though once he was there he couldn’t think what that might be. Up close, he could smell the shampoo the half elf had worked into his long hair, the perfume on the insides of his wrists. He could see the creases in the corner of his eyes from all the times he’d smiled, the slight freckles across his nose that were only visible from some angles.

“You have…anyone in mind? To bring an end to the drought you’re experiencing?” he asked, casually.

“Well…” Vax seemed suddenly tense, or at least the beginnings of tense, more like aware, “My usual squeeze has just shacked up with someone long term so that’s not an option…but, yeah, I guess you could say there’s someone I might have in mind.”

The little pond of warm light and colour that was the store on the dark street suddenly seemed to grow hotter, like a heart pulsing with its own anticipatory beat.

“So…why wait?” Gilmore asked, his voice low, brown eyes fixing on Vax’s grey ones, “Why not just ask them…whoever this is.”

Vax broke their eye contact first, looking down at his hands, fiddling with the ring on his forefinger, turning it round and round, “I guess you could say I’m scared.”

Gilmore absorbed that silently, rapping painted fingernails on the wooden counter. He didn’t want to assume, assuming wrong right now could cripple him, it could put a hole right in the middle of a friendship that meant a lot to him. And he got the sense he wasn’t alone in those feelings.

“Fear is pretty notorious for standing in the way of something that might actually be good for us,” he eventually said, twisting one of his bracelets around his wrist.

“Yeah…” Vax nodded, “It’s just…you know when you think you see something…and you want to believe you see it? But there’s always that little voice in the back of your mind telling you you’re an idiot, you’re fooling yourself and…and that, even if you did see it, you’d just ruin it like you ruined everything else…”

Gilmore swallowed hard, deciding that any bruise he took to his pride would be more than worth it, if he could see to it that Vax never thought those feelings again. That was what he did after all. He helped.

“Well, sweetling,” he said, taking the half elf’s hands in his own, “Whenever you hear that voice, imagine mine. Telling you that you don’t ruin things. That you deserve to be happy and you deserve to have someone who wants to spend time with you. That you deserve love, if that’s what you want. Can you do that for me?”

There were tears in those grey eyes now but a smile on his lips to go along with it, “Yeah. I can, Shaun.”

There was no fear left in his expression now, not a stitch of it. Just the overwhelming desire to kiss.

And they did.

It wasn’t like Gilmore had imagined it would be, only because he’d never been able to imagine just how soft his lips would be, how he would sigh as his mouth opened under his own, how his hands would cup his face. An infinity of little intricacies that could only be fully appreciated in the act, the act of kissing someone who you’d been dreaming of kissing since the first time they’d walked through your door.

Who, you only now realised, had been needing you as much you’d been needing him.

It was a wonderful feeling. After years of helping other people, of filling the holes in their lives, Shaun Gilmore knew how it felt to know that everything, absolutely everything, was right again.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Campaign One fic! If you want to see more of my Critical Role stuff or even my TAZ stuff, it's all on my Tumblr, @mollymauk-teafleak. Please leave a comment, it means the world to me!


End file.
